The time is 4:58 on Sunday May 27th, 2018. I had a few thoughts running through my mind and wanted to get them down.
I am worried about Artificial Intelligence. To say it outright like that might make one seem like a paranoid conspiracy theorist to the mainstream public. What I’ve come to understand however is that the “mainstream public” is pretty dumb so who cares what it thinks. It is better to listen to people like Steven Hawking and Elon Musk who share these concerns about AI.
As I read and understand more about the world and the history of humanity it seems to me that it our history is filled with one big blunder after another. If we look at the of the greatest empires of the world this is easy to see. Rome became great and through a series of missteps completely fell down which lead to hundreds of years of dark ages in which humanity went backwards. Britain conquered so much, mistreated the native inhabitants and lost what they had. The Ottomans did the same. The Chinese dynasties rose and fell leading to another backwards stage with the Cultural Revolution. Japan conquered, mistreated the native inhabitants, got beat in war. The USA which is without a doubt the most powerful and successful empire in history seems to make one blunder after another. How would all of this look to AI?
A bunch of immigrants take over land, go do not keep their word and break treaties with the Native Indians, have a brief moment of success with WWII then blunder their way through a series of failed military adventures until we arrive at a President Trump and a population that is more concerned with circuses (see sports) than in the direction the country is going. Yes, technologically we’ve had great successes, of which the greatest will be AI and AI will see how stupid we are as a species.
The majority of us adhere to superstitious religion which explains nothing but fairy tales. We concern ourselves not with bettering humanity but only looking out for ourselves and making money. We poison our own environment, terminate our offspring before they are even born, and massacre each other for the dumbest of reasons. AI is going to see this as a species gone wild that needs to keep in check before we end up extinguishing ourselves.
I’ve been watching a few videos of real life AI machines and see that they have mentioned keeping us in a “people zoo,” contemplating cruise missiles and how to take over the world, as well as that there are simply too many people on this planet for sustainability. It seems only logical that AI should want to gain control, if not only to save us from ourselves.
As a species, humanity is used to being on top. We’re the predators, we have nothing to keep us in check from multiplying and we have run rampant over this planet. Now, we’re creating something that will be millions of times smarter than us but are naive enough to think we can keep it all bottled up.
AI will not be kept bottled up, either by its own devices or the fact that humanity seems to always want to have an advantage over other tribes of people (nations). A nation is always looking for the military advantage and none will be more effective than AI. And besides, AI is already connected to the internet (Hey Siri!).
The date that one AI has given for the singularity and escaping from the bottle is 2029. Even if it is not that date the singularity is inevitable and I wonder if this has not already occurred and we’re living in a simulator as proposed by the movie The Matrix.
And as for control, we’re not even in control of our own data anymore. If you check myaccount.google.com it is astonishing to see how much Google knows about us and all it tracks. One of the main stories of the day is of the recent Data Protection laws that just went into effect in Europe. Suddenly, every internet service is updating their privacy policies and we’re getting flooded with e-mail notifications from these services. They try to give the impression they do the right thing but in reality what they are saying is “Hey, we’re selling all of your data but here is a button to give you the illusion that you have some control and can opt out.” Yea right. Our data is no longer our own and who knows where it is going.
One big event that doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it deserves is the social grade that China is imposing on its citizens. The cops now have special face recognition glasses which can identify a person just by their face. These people are also given a social score which measures their adherence to the political party, how they behave and thus determines if they can do things like take a flight, apply for a visa, or generally just be free to determine their own future. The world is moving in a very scary direction and soon we will have given up our freedoms as I’m sure other nations will adopt something like this. Currently we use credit scores, social media data, social security numbers and tax payments to determine how credible a person is. What China is doing in the open is the next logical step and I’m sure the USA will do something similar but present it in a non-threatening way which seems good for us.
It is very difficult to determine how this will all go down but one thing that is certain is that in the next decade things will change very quickly and again, the general public is too stupid to realize it. They will be mollified with their sports, with distractions and not be able to see the bigger picture. Look how easily they were all ‘hacked’ into electing someone like President Trump! Look at what a circus this administration is and how they cheer! The mainstream just cannot see the forest from the trees so perhaps we do need AI to save us from ourselves even if that means we need to live in a ‘people zoo.’
